Sep 14, 2012 4 min read

I have four phone chargers — three “normal” ones for the house and one that works off my car’s cigarette lighter.

If I want them to be worth anything next month, it’ll cost me at least $116 plus tax.

I’m not buying a new brand of phone, but every device, charger and bed-side radio I’ve purchased in the last four years is suddenly useless. That’s because I plan on swapping out my current half-broken iPhone for a brand new iPhone 5.

Why would buying a newer version of the same phone make all my accessories useless, you ask? Well, in case you don’t obsessively follow these kinds of things, the iPhone 5 unveiling this Wednesday included a rumored major change to the device’s design: Apple retired the 30-pin plug connector that has been on every iPod, iPhone and iPad since 2003 with a much smaller “lightning” connector. So anything that you ever plugged into any Apple device for the last nine years won’t plug into the new ones.

(First world problems, amirite?)

With the new iPhone, instead of being able to use my previous phone chargers, I have to either buy new chargers with the smaller connector and toss the old ones in the trash or shell out $29 a piece for adapters to allow me to use the “old” connector with the new. (That’s on top of the minimum of $199 the actual phone will set me back.)

The completely unnecessary change was too much for my favorite tech writer, Slate’s usually mild-mannered Farhaad Manjoo, who unleashed a blisteringly funny sarcastic invective at the change. He’s far from an Apple attacker, but that didn’t stop him from ripping Apple a new, er, stem on the day of iPhone 5 announcement, saying the new connector is “causing endless hassles and minimal benefits for users” and that “it’s revelatory of Apple’s belief that the people who buy its gadgets are cash registers. “

(All in all, my favorite line of the piece was his tongue-in-cheek rebuttal of those who say the new phone was the same as the old: “For one thing, it’s the first iPhone to be called the iPhone 5. Indeed, this is the first iPhone whose name includes a number greater than 4. Tell me that’s not progress.”)

If this connector-switch was in the name of progress, say, a faster connector, it would be one thing. But in reality, Apple is changing the connector and screwing over its customers simply because it can. And even though a universal standard for cell phone plugs exists (the mini USB), Apple is sticking with a proprietary plug because it means they can still charge accessory makers a mint for the “right” to make iPhone compatible junk. Again, because they can. Frankly, it’s hubris worthy of Walter White or, even worse, Patriots fans.

Of course, despite my complaints, if we’re being honest, there’s no way I’m not buying the new iPhone. And that’s exactly what Apple is banking on.

(Heck, I just lost about 20 minutes getting lost reading about iPhone 5 on the Apple website when I was just going online to check the price of the adapter.)

But — for the first time since I got my original iPhone (a second-gen) in 2008 — I considered switching from the iPhone today. Despite buying an iPhone each of the last three times I’ve upgraded, I spent some time this afternoon researching the new Nokia Lumia 920, which will come out later this year.

Lucky for Apple, I still plan on picking up the iPhone 5 when it becomes available, but that’s mostly because I’ve been holding out since spring, when the buttons on my current phone started going wonky. If it didn’t take me five or six pushes to get a button to work, I’d probably just stick with my current iPhone and all my compatible accessories.

And even though it galls me to do so, I’ll grit my teeth and re-buy the accessories I already have. With my old phone on its last legs and my own admitted inability to not be mesmerized by the newest shiny, fancy gadgets, Apple will be milking me for some extra dough.

So while I’m sure to some this might come off as just a whiny nerd rant over a “stupid phone,” it’s actually a handy reminder that any company will throw you under the bus in the pursuit of another buck or two.

Because remember, dear reader, the goal of publicly traded companies is profit — not your happiness.

Speaking of cigarette lighters — it’s 2012, don’t you think it’s time we replace the cigarette lighter in cars with a standard three-prong plug?

Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.